Really Quite Absurd
by Kihin Ranno
Summary: Motoki fears for his life when he spends a little quality time with Sailor Neptune.


Really Quite Absurd  
Written for the Sailor Moon Monthly Fanfiction Challenge on LiveJournal  
December 2007: Motoki - Day Twenty-Six: Reflection  
by Kihin Ranno  
1/1

Being married to an ass-kicking, thunder-wielding, Amazonian warrior woman who knew as many ways to kill a man with a popsicle stick as she did roast a chicken was not always what Motoki had had in mind. Because sometimes that warrior woman found an occasion during which she felt the need to ride off into danger, leaving him to twiddle his thumbs and fret over her systems. Sometimes, everyone went with her.

And sometimes, people recovering from laser gun wounds had to stay behind.

"So," Motoki sighed to the teal-haired woman sitting across the table from him.

"Yes," Neptune concurred, her voice smooth like blood spilling from a wound.

Not for the first time, Motoki clenched his jaw and fought the need to cower before the soldier of Neptune and beg her not to kill him. She could be a mite unsettling. Actually, extremely unsettling.

"Here we are," Motoki voiced to prevent himself from screaming that she was an assassin and run away in terror.

She nodded slowly. _Too slowly._ "Indeed."

Motoki shifted. "And they're not."

"That does seem to be the case."

He shifted again, fighting the urge to scratch his backside. "Coming back though."

"One does hope."

Motoki exhaled until his lungs were completely depleted of oxygen. Then he tapped his foot for awhile. Then he gave up and scratched the itch, hoping she didn't notice.

She did.

"You do think they're coming back, right?"

She looked at him - directly at him for the first time - and he felt about ready to piss himself. "You are a very nervous individual."

_And you're scary._

"I know. Once I was stuck here with Rei - er, Mars - and... well, body parts had the potential to be flambéed."

"She tends to overreact."

_You don't react at all. You're still waters and stone. **You have no soul.**_

"That she does."

Bored and needing to touch something, Motoki reached out for a mirror lying on the table. The moment his hand was about to touch the intricate carvings, Neptune halted him with a look.

"What do you think you're doing?"

_Trying not to cry._

"Just wanted to look."

"Nothing to look at," she insisted coldly, pinning him down with such a stare that he thought his bones might start melting at any moment.

Motoki raised both eyebrows. "But, it's a mirror, of course there's..."

Neptune passed her hand over the glass. There was no reflection.

_Soulless witchy assassin!_

"Huh."

"It doesn't show you that anymore," she explained, sounding a bit wistful. "It used to. Years ago, before the fall. But when we woke up, I looked into my mirror and I could not see myself." She pursed her lips. They went white beneath her lipgloss. "I thought I'd gone mad."

"Oh, it's that mirror," Motoki murmured, comprehending her reaction. He stared at the looking glass that could only look, not be looked upon. "Why do you think it stopped?"

Neptune shrugged. "It never told me. I think maybe it got lonely."

_God damn it, she's a nut._

"...okay."

"I mean, there was nobody for it to reflect," she explained, plowing ahead and making it perfectly clear that she did not care at all for what he thought of her. "We were all sleeping. Almost dead. Maybe a part of it died too, robbed it of the knowledge of bending light, turning it back. Maybe with nothing to do it just... lost something." She sighed. "Or maybe it just didn't want to waste anymore time on me waiting for me to check my lipstick."

Motoki nodded. He wanted so badly to run away. "Uh-huh."

She gave him a look of supreme amusement. "You think I'm insane."

_She is going to feed me my scrotum if I make any sudden movements._

"I didn't say that."

She smiled. "Your eyes did."

"I just... it sounds weird."

_And she's going to kill me right about... now._

She just chuckled. "You are far weirder, Furuhata Motoki. Believe me on that."

He straightened, marginally insulted. "How do you figure?"

She struggled to her feet, balancing on silver crutches and wincing all the way. Then she gave him a look that informed him of just whom the superior specimen in the room was, damaged or no. "Because you are gripping that chair as if I am going to hurl a knife into your chest at any given moment."

"...noticed that did you?"

"It's alarmingly evident." She shook her head, a teacher chiding the student, only Motoki had no idea what he was meant to learn. "Let me tell you right now that the idea is really quite absurd."

Unbelievably, he felt some degree of relief. "Really?"

"Of course." She flashed a wicked smile, light glinting off her teeth. "If I were to kill you, I'd be far more likely to cut your throat from behind."

Then she hobbled away, leaving Motoki in the room all by himself. He sat there for a good long while, his stomach somewhere in the vicinity of the floor, the taste of thwarted bile in his mouth. And though he knew he was masculine, knew he was an adult, and knew he could probably outrun her under the influence of a great deal of adrenaline, Motoki curled into a fetal position, shaking like a ramshackle in a tornado.

"I want my wife."


End file.
